Page 22 of Lost Memories (Secrets of Mackinac Island 1)

Still, it was pretty eerie that she’d discovered her mother’s diaries only a week after her death.

Elise lifted the first diary from the top of the pile. When she opened the front page, she found the words:

Allison Darby. Calabasas, January 1993

Elise arched her brow. She’d been twelve at the time, and her mother had been on the tail-end of the “celebrity status” she had enjoyed after that bigger film. When she flickered open to a random diary page, she discovered the words:

...and the thing about Mike is, he’s a fantastic lover. Absolutely fantastic. But do I feel anything that resembles that very thing it’s meant to represent? Love? No. In comparison to the old ways, I used to feel, no.

But of course, is it possible that, because I’m “getting up there in age,” as they say, I am unable to feel such things any longer, at least in the same way? Does age mean feeling “love” in a more practical way?

Goodness, I hope not.

Elise’s heart thudded. Slowly, she crept the diary closed and blinked through the grey darkness of the study.

Mike? Who had Mike been? When had there ever been a Mike?

Here it was, again. Another person her mother had hidden from her.

Had it really been “for Elise’s own good”?

Elise pieced through the other diaries, only discovering enough to ground her in the “year” of them. There was a diary from the summer of 1976 when her mother’s handwriting had been much loopier and childlike. There was another diary from winter, 1969, which her mother had apparently spent with her own grandmother out east after a tumultuous year at school. According to the diary, Allison had been bullied a great deal and needed to step back and regroup. This was also something Elise had never learned. Still, she only spent a few minutes with each. In the next room, she could hear Penny walk around slowly, pop the cork out of a bottle of wine, and flick channels on the TV.

“Mom? Are you okay?” Penny called. “I think the pizza will be here soon. The app says five minutes.”

“I’m doing good, honey. Just trying to start in this room!”

At the last minute, Elise grabbed the very final diary, at the very bottom of the box. She inhaled sharply, opened the first page, and found the words:

Allison Darby. Mackinac Island. 1979.

Her breath caught in her throat. Elise hadn’t fully known it, but of course, she had been on the hunt for this very diary.

“It was the most magical time of our lives,”that woman, Margaret, had said.

Magical time. A secret kept from Elise her entire life. Her heart hammered in her throat. Slowly, she rose, still staring at those words: Mackinac Island. Mackinac Island.

She certainly hadn’t expected the name Margaret had said aloud to be spelled like that.

“Mom! The pizza is here!” Penny called.

Elise placed the diary at the edge of the desk and backed out of the room. What was it about this time of her mother’s life that scared her so much? What was it about her mother’s past that suddenly petrified her?

How much could anyone know another person—even when so much of your heart was tied up in that person?

When she entered the living room again, she found Penny ripping open the boxes of pizza and splaying them on the coffee table. She rubbed her palms together and said, “Let’s eat! I’m starving. Here, I poured you a glass of wine.”

Was there anything major that Elise hadn’t told her daughter? Was there anything she had to tell her now, just in case she was run over by a truck tomorrow and never had the chance?

Penny flipped on a chick flick they both loved from Penny’s teen years, ‘How to lose a guy in 10 days’ and they sat back with their cheesy goodness and their glasses of wine. All the while, though, Elise struggled to remain in the movie’s world. That diary seemed to scream about its existence from the next room.

Finally, mid-way through her slice of pizza, Elise dropped the plate to the side, tore up from the couch, and staggered back toward the study. She wrapped her fingers around the diary, feeling at the rough texture of the old thing—marveling at the distance it had traveled, both in time and space.

Elise reappeared in the living area to find Penny pushed forward, a slice of pizza stitched between her lips and her eyes totally focused on the screen. Elise chuckled and swept a hand across her daughter’s ponytail. She rejoined her on the couch, but with a far different prospect of how to spend the next few hours of her life. Luckily, Penny didn’t glance over, as she was too focused on the story.

After a long, staggered breath, Elise forced herself to open the diary.

She felt as though she traveled back in time.

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